Abstract

This talk will situate the life and work of Meher Baba (1894-1969) within the twentieth-century’s global history of religion. As one of the most successful religious figures of the era, Meher Baba gained an international reputation as an advocate for religious ecumenism and a universalist spirituality. While still largely overlooked by historians of religion, his more than four-decade career—starting in the 1920s and his eventual status as one of the most popular gurus of the countercultural movements of the 1960s—earned Meher Baba a global following, first in his native India, and eventually across Europe, North America, and elsewhere. This talk will examine the historical genealogy of Meher Baba’s life and religious ideas, including his eclectic synthesis of revived forms of Zoroastrian heterodoxy, ideas associated with the Theosophical Society, and religious-literary traditions drawn from Indo-Iranian Sufism. As the talk will suggest, aspects of Meher Baba’s religious ideas had roots in the early modern Persianate religious-cultural system. As the talk will also suggest, Meher Baba’s life and work help to demonstrate that—rather than being eclipsed by modernity and nationalism—the Persianate cultural-religious system survived into the modern period to find new forms of expression in the twentieth century.

Bio

Afshin Marashi is Professor and Farzaneh Family Chair in Modern Iranian History at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India and the Making of Modern Iran (University of Texas Press, 2020) and Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power, and the State, 1870-1940 (University of Washington Press, 2008). In addition to articles and book chapters, he is the co-editor of four edited volumes and special issues, including Rethinking Iranian Nationalism and Modernity (University of Texas Press, 2014). He also serves as the co-editor of the book series Connected Histories of the Middle East and the Global South at the University of Texas Press.